How United Airlines Exploits the Pandemic
Our original itinerary had us leaving Barcelona for Istanbul on April 22nd. However, our flight was canceled and Turkey announced that no one who has been in Spain in the prior fourteen days will even be allowed into the country. We were grateful our Airbnb host in Istanbul was kind enough to give us a full refund. Unfortunately the canceled flight messed with our future flights because we were booked to fly on United from Istanbul to Denver on May 24th. But it's not a problem, because United has generously offered to allow us to change our flight with no change fee, right?
We'd been discussing when and how to get back onto our itinerary. Mostly this has involved looking at flight options and discussing what's available. Flight schedules and prices change daily and sometimes multiple times in one day.
One option that we were seriously considering was just buying a new ticket and waiting to see if United would cancel our existing flight. There's a good chance that this would happen, given that the Turkish government decreed that no international flights will be allowed and has given no guidance on when this might be lifted. Of course, the problem with this is that airlines don't want to give refunds for canceled flights, even though they're required by law to do so. So they have taken to waiting until the very last minute to cancel a flight and urging people to cancel their tickets in exchange for vouchers instead. If we no-show for the flight and it doesn't get canceled, we don't even get a credit for future travel. But if we call and cancel our ticket in advance, they will give us a credit in exchange for waiving our right to a refund if the flight does get canceled. Carrie's mom's flight from to Barcelona was only canceled five hours before it was scheduled to take off—which would have stranded her in Atlanta if she had tried to take it!
So when I saw that United had a flight from Barcelona to Denver on May 7th at a reasonable (not great, but not terrible) price, we decided this was what we should pull the trigger on. This gives us extra time to self-quarantine before resuming something that resembles our original plans. Plus, since we can change our existing flight, we're not gambling on a cancelation that may or may not happen.
The new flight I wanted to book.
The flight I found connects through Munich and costs $1,231.30 for two passengers. I then logged into my United account and went through the process of changing my existing ticket. Imagine my surprise when I find that the cost to change my ticket to the exact same flight would be $5,804.70. You can see in the attached photo that the change fee was generously waived and they applied the credit from my original ticket, bring the net cost down to just $4,357. Somehow changing my ticket increased the price almost fivefold!
Thanks United, for waiving that change fee!
The exact same flight but when changing an existing ticket.
Well, Carrie and I don't give up quite so easily and we weren't willing to buy a second ticket and hope that we can eventually get some value out of the old ticket someday. So I called United. Luckily we're six hours ahead of Eastern time, so it was very, very early in the morning and I got right through to an agent. I didn't tell him that I wanted to change my existing ticket, though. Instead, I told him I wanted to book a flight from Barcelona to Denver. When he found the same flight I did and quoted me the same price, only then did I tell him I had an existing flight that I wanted to change to this new one.
I could hear him tapping away at his keyboard as he makes some comment about how he's having a hard time getting the “right fare” to come up. I'm nearly certain the system was trying to get him to charge me the same ridiculous price I'd gotten online. But fortunately, he didn't seem to have the nerve to tell me what the different fare would be. After several long minutes of waiting, he finally was able to process the change at the correct, lower fare!
We'll arrive in Denver on May 7th and do our fourteen day quarantine at an Airbnb somewhere in Colorado. We're crossing our fingers that our reservation in Breckenridge for the second week of June will hold and we can get some hiking in. Then we'll be off to Tampa and hopefully can stick to our itinerary going forward.
Our next international stop is Tokyo from early July to mid-August, where we'd planned on attending a few Olympic events. Alas, the games have been postponed until next year. So if an option to push our Airbnb and flight out one year arises, we may take advantage of it and go somewhere else in Asia instead (Cambodia?) before continuing on to Mongolia in August.
One of the few things keeping us sane at the moment is reminding ourselves that eventually we will be able to get back on track!